This looks like excellent mainstream media coverage of the problems with keyless entry systems.
Highlights:
- A graph showing car theft is increasing in England and Wales, and a quote from a major insurance company: "owners of modern keyless vehicles were twice as likely to make a theft claim"
- References (with links!) to security research predicting the problem in 2011
- “The prevailing view was that criminals are nowhere near educated and smart enough to break into the internal car electronics,” he said. “What they didn’t realised was that somebody would make a box and automate it all for them.”
- No mention of the Flipper Zero, instead "The Observer last week found a range of devices for “programming keys and emergency starts” being promoted online for up to £5,000"
- Hyundai say they are working with the police, but Toyota are improving their technical security.
Everything with key entry for cars is a mess. The keys are expensive, easy to bypass, and the mobile app solutions are both a mess and tools that don’t meaningfully handle abuse situations
Can the flipper zero be used to steal cars? it's got a radio and can do raw input/output, so sure, but I've not seen anything definitive that says it can actually be used for that.
you'd need a break in the encryption and seed values used in order to get into and start a car with one, and afaik, that's not been shown to be possible. I've heard a rumor that older models of certain cars have weaker implementations of how they handle rolling codes, but nothing definitive.
more specifically, if I had such a break, you could program a cheaper device with the correct information.
without anything definitive, it just comes across as fear mongering over a toy has the word "hack" as part of its description.
There’s also some cars such as the Toyota RAV4 that could have the car started via the CANbus connection. Thieves figured out you could take a headlight off and connect to the headlights CAN connection and start the car that way. Flipper could do that, I assume, but so could any microcontroller with a CAN add on board…
“ hi-tech devices disguised as handheld games consoles are being traded online for thousands of pounds and are used by organised crime gangs to mimic the electronic key on an Ioniq 5”
This is not referring to the flipper zero right? Doesn’t seem like that’s possible
I’m wondering why these keys don’t require movement to activate. That seems to nearly entirely solve the problem.
A key sitting stationary in your house shouldn’t have any reason to transmit until it’s moved. You can still keep the key in your pocket since you’d have to walk to your car, thus activating the radio.
i.e. the key shouldn’t answer unless it’s moving or has recently moved. A cheap little accelerometer in the key fob would basically fix this whole problem.
This seems like expected behavior. Newer cars have 'smart keys' and those are going to be worth more than most older cars. If you're going to steal you'll want to optimize for value.
14 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 31.4 ms ] threadHighlights:
- A graph showing car theft is increasing in England and Wales, and a quote from a major insurance company: "owners of modern keyless vehicles were twice as likely to make a theft claim"
- References (with links!) to security research predicting the problem in 2011
- “The prevailing view was that criminals are nowhere near educated and smart enough to break into the internal car electronics,” he said. “What they didn’t realised was that somebody would make a box and automate it all for them.”
- No mention of the Flipper Zero, instead "The Observer last week found a range of devices for “programming keys and emergency starts” being promoted online for up to £5,000"
- Hyundai say they are working with the police, but Toyota are improving their technical security.
They have a second article on the same topic, also published today: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/24/revealed-car...
I know it's not mentioned but seeing it's popularity with car thefts and impending ban how does it even stop the problem.
you'd need a break in the encryption and seed values used in order to get into and start a car with one, and afaik, that's not been shown to be possible. I've heard a rumor that older models of certain cars have weaker implementations of how they handle rolling codes, but nothing definitive.
more specifically, if I had such a break, you could program a cheaper device with the correct information.
without anything definitive, it just comes across as fear mongering over a toy has the word "hack" as part of its description.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/crook...
This is not referring to the flipper zero right? Doesn’t seem like that’s possible
A key sitting stationary in your house shouldn’t have any reason to transmit until it’s moved. You can still keep the key in your pocket since you’d have to walk to your car, thus activating the radio.